Glenn C. Altschuler is Vice President for University Relations, Dean of the School of Continuing Education and Summer Sessions, and the Thomas and Dorothy Litwin Professor of American Studies at Cornell University. David J. Skorton is president of Cornell University and professor in the Departments of Medicine and Pediatrics at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York City and in Biomedical Engineering at the College of Engineering on Cornell's Ithaca campus.

Does Your Major Matter?

Regular readers of our column know that we are unabashed fans and supporters of the humanities and the creative and performing arts. We believe that the world’s thorniest problems will not be solved—nor will our nation be secure—without an understanding of ethics, cultures other than our own, and what it means to be fully human. And we have seen first-hand that students who complete liberal arts degrees have deeply satisfying—and productive—personal and professional lives.

Such reassurances, however, may not be enough to satisfy high school seniors, undergraduates, and their parents. We hope the economic value of a degree isn’t the only reason young people come to college, but we recognize that it’s a big reason, and increasingly so in the wake of the global recession and intensifying global competition. Given the cost of a college education, moreover, we understand why so many parents and students want to know which majors are most likely to result in jobs with high incomes.

We’d love to point to data indicating that majors don’t matter in employment, starting salaries and lifelong earnings. But facts are stubborn things. Last January the Center on Education and the Workforce at Georgetown University published Hard Times: College Majors, Unemployment and Earnings, and in mid-October the U.S. Census Bureau released a pair of briefings based on data from the American Community Survey, and the two studies reached the same conclusions. Individuals with engineering degrees, they indicate, experience lower unemployment and make more money than graduates with any other major. Undergraduate majors in computer science, mathematics, statistics, business, life sciences, and physical sciences are next in line. Liberal arts majors are at the back of this pack.

There is a lot more, however, to this story. Liberal arts majors actually do just fine, with incomes far in excess of the median in the United States. And many of them, like the Cornell graduates surveyed in 2009 (download here), are as satisfied or more satisfied with their lives as their classmates in other disciplines. For them, to quote an English proverb, enough is as good as a feast.

The liberal arts, moreover, also serves as a preferred pathway to rewarding and remunerative careers. According to the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC), medical schools accepted 43 percent of the biological sciences majors, 47 percent of physical sciences majors, 51 percent of humanities majors, and 45 percent of social sciences majors who applied in 2010. “Admission committee members know that medical students can develop the essential skills of acquiring, synthesizing, applying and communicating information through a wide varietyof academic disciplines,” the AAMC states.

The American Bar Association agrees: “The ABA does not recommend any undergraduate majors or group of courses to prepare for a legal education. Students are admitted to law school from almost every academic discipline.” A study by a Chicago State University professor bears this out: the top ten majors with the highest acceptance rates for law school include philosophy, anthropology, history and English. Both organizations advise prospective applicants to choose majors that interest and challenge them, work hard for excellent grades, develop their research and writing skills and make the most of the opportunities that come their way.

These statistics remind us how important it is for students to major in what they enjoy most and what they’re best at. When they do so, they’re more likely to excel in their classes and enhance their career options. Those who complete post-baccalaureate study will enhance their chances of eating their cake and having it too, with prestigious, high-paying jobs and, equally important, from our point of view, fulfilling work that allows them to make a difference in the world.

And so, when students and parents ask, “What can I do with a liberal arts major?” the right answer, grounded in the evidence, is “A lot. A whole lot.”

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Much of the record of liberal arts grads in the outside world can be explained by factors that have nothing to do with the education they received there.

As I found when I attended an Ivy League college, theses schools draw the bulk of their students from the social and economic groups most likely to succeed in the first place. It helps that many of these graduates of all economic strata have a strong ‘soft’ infrastructural support when they graduate: supportive families, and a place to stay near the large job centers where you can pick and choose (more than otherwise, anyway) among a range of entryu -level and internship opportunities.

You’ve even supposed to work your parents’ friends and colleagues for opportunities. That’s what the jobs counselor told me at Williams, clearly assuming that these will be managers and professionals instead of warehousemen and gas station attendants.

As an exercise, try tracking the young people from favored groups who instead of attending a top-tier college go sailing around the world. (A surprising number of these.) They tend to end up in the same stratum as their parents too.

I’d like to propose that liberal arts become a bigger part of the engineering and science curriculum. The overwhelming majority of engineers I know cannot write a few simple sentences explaining the what, why, and how of their activities. Neither can they [apparently] understand a few simple sentences. Don’t get me started on critical thinking skills which are also conspicuously lacking. It’s not limited to engineers either. Many of our “managers” are similarly deficient. A few course along these lines – which the LA curriculum is well qualified to provide – could work wonders for all.

In a covertly communist nation yes. But you can not deny the fact that the arts as of late have been only a parasite unto freedom. Liberal arts lock step with the communist culture of liberal America are what is killing humanity.

Freedom is wholly abandoned. Liberalism is the abandonment of freedom, humanity, life & the human soul. In order to enslave humanity under your desire to drink our blood. This is the damn living via parasitic corruption.

Today there appears to be a future in it. However, though conservatism is almost wholly nullified, without voice, identity, a coherent agenda, & a long list of similar dysfunction, it is in fact the only viable way a society can exist.

This nation is about to be annihilated financially. Americans know that obama brings further decline & romney brings a nose dive to a horrific crash.

Mitt Romney is directly responsible for Americas hard left turn because he concedes all to liberals. Which overall brings conservatism now to the lowest it has been in a long time, through it’s own ignorance.

But you can not deny the infinite truth. Liberalism is wholly decline. & conservatism is wholly true power, freedom, & success.

The human soul desires to be unbound. Americans desire to live free. Liberalism will destroy us. & then we will rebuild minus them, i.e. you.

I very much doubt that any liberal is happy. Parasites never escape the infinite truth that they subsist on their own damnation.

I have to say that I love the way you use facts and evidence to support your hypothesis. Examples, too; you used a lot of those. Excellent work.

If you’re trying to say that going to a wholly socialist government necessitates the abandonment of liberty, then your thinking is flawed (it can lead there, but there is little evidence to suggest that true socialist governments necessarily end up that way).

If you’re trying to say anything else at all, then please find a way to say so–without using hyperbole, conjecture, and imagery entirely devoid of substance.

my best friend’s mother makes $88 an hour on the internet. She has been out of a job for 5 months but last month her pay was $16145 just working on the internet for a few hours. Read more on this site try37.cℴm

Your are article makes for a touching against all odds “Rudy” screenplay. But let’s not encourage kids to go to college and rack up huge debt, only to find themselves unemployable. As you correctly pointed out in your article, “We’d love to point to data indicating that majors don’t matter in employment, starting salaries and lifelong earnings. But facts are stubborn things.”

Let’s give our kids practical advice that will put them in the best position to enjoy a good quality of life. What will be your advice to the over half of all liberal arts graduates that can’t find a job – go back to school?!

There is no arguing that the world could use more understanding and compassion. And, if that comes from studying humanities and other liberal arts, then let’s encourage kids to enroll at the “University of Udacity” or the “University of Coursera” or even Khan Academy.